Parliamentary Inquiry: CFM lets rip

[french frank]

I cannot really subscribe to this sheep and goats argument. There are not two discrete audiences - on the one hand, the "broad public" , happy with downmarket commercial fodder and on the other, the enlightened ones with "high expectations". Some Radio 3 listeners I know like the stuff we hate. Do all CFM people have only low expectations? I would have thought that there is quite a substantial overlap range and that with its recent changes Radio 3 is not in fact "targeting a broad audience'" but fighting over these middle range floaters.

I don't think that answers the point. Yes, there is an overlap: according to the BBC some 45% of Radio 3 listeners tune in to Classic FM. Alternatively, 15% of Classic FM listeners tune in to Radio 3. That doesn't mean that they want to find a similar diet on both stations; or that those who want one or the other should not be provided with it.

As one of our supporters wrote:

"... comparing the numbers attending the latest blockbuster film with the numbers visiting a remote provincial art gallery doesn't tell us anything about the artistic integrity of a nation's artists (or musicians): it merely informs us that most people sometimes want to be entertained." Precisely.

It isn't sheep and goats audiences, as individuals with wide or narrow tastes: it's the treatment of the general content that is different: some people prefer one, some prefer another and some switch from one to the other.

[french frank]

Interesting email just in with a scan from the Spectator. It describes a clip from Blue Peter in 1972. Yehudi Menuhin has his violin and is talking about the strings and Paganini, and then plays an operatic aria 'accompanying himself' (says Valerie Singleton) 'with the left hand pizzicato.' And then he plays a bit from Paganini's Caprice No 24. Four minutes of prime-time children's television, addressing children of 8 or 9.

The point being made was not that children's television should be just like that now, 40 years on, serious and not dumbed down in an effort to inspire young people; it was that Radio 3 'operates more and more on the opposite, unflattering and eventually self-fulfilling principle' that its adult listeners can be expected to understand almost nothing.

It may be that 'most' of Radio 3's listeners understand almost nothing. But many, under the age of 50, won't have been introduced to broadcasts like the Blue Peter one ... And the majority of Radio 3 listener ARE, in any case, over the age of 50.

[Flay]

Should Radio 3 not be a treasure that we discover (as in my case) much like entering an art gallery or museum?

By all means advertise the content, but please don't degrade it.

[french frank]

Something in the Daily Telegraph today? The emails are thumping into the FoR3 Inbox... ?

Yep, they've picked up on the CFM evidence to the CMSSC http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...listeners.html

[DracoM]

AND given the generally and incrementally developing crisis in many, many UK primary and secondary schools ref Music in the last decade one way or another, the U30's in UK have almost zero awareness of classical music in the classroom or beyond it. The difference between much of the state sector provision and what is happening in the independent sector is stunning and shameful.

CFM caters for those with little or no knowledge but a hunger for decent wallpaper and some knowledge.

R3 was / should be / is the next level. Except that it is currently mightily betraying aspirants to such knowledge by the diluted pap it is increasingly 'delivering', and as a result, even more unsatisfying to those who are decently versed but hunger for more and better.

The growing and very public bruise on R3's backside is that caused from falling many, many feet onto the hard floor of obstinate audience revolt from between two stools.

[gurnemanz]

CFM caters for those with little or no knowledge but a hunger for decent wallpaper and some knowledge.

R3 was / should be / is the next level. Except that it is currently mightily betraying aspirants to such knowledge by the diluted pap it is increasingly 'delivering', and as a result, even more unsatisfying to those who are decently versed but hunger for more and better.

... not so conveniently simple. Being a "decently versed" type, I prefer Radio 3 and am allergic to CFM, but I know quite a few people, including some near relations and various members of the Choral Soc of which I am Chairman, who seem to like Classic FM. I do enjoy disparaging it in their company but would not enjoy insulting them by characterising them as a kind of sub-species with " little or no knowledge but a hunger for decent wallpaper."

[french frank]

You're allergic to Classic FM - fine, but do you actually enjoy the tweets, texts, phone-ins, TV celebrities, irrelevant 'interactive' chatter on Radio 3? You may do because, as I've always said, it is obvious that whatever Radio 3 does, there will be an audience for it somewhere. But that's not a reason for adopting that particular style.

I don't agree that there's much of an insult in pointing out that many people don't know much about classical music, don't really want to know a great deal, but like it enough to appreciate that kind of music as background listening. That doesn't make them a sub-species, even where it applies. They are simply different and have different tastes and - more important - different requirements.

... not so conveniently simple. Being a "decently versed" type, I prefer Radio 3 and am allergic to CFM, but I know quite a few people, including some near relations and various members of the Choral Soc of which I am Chairman, who seem to like Classic FM. I do enjoy disparaging it in their company but would not enjoy insulting them by characterising them as a kind of sub-species with " little or no knowledge but a hunger for decent wallpaper."

[Master Jacques]

Something in the Daily Telegraph today? The emails are thumping into the FoR3 Inbox... ?

Yep, they've picked up on the CFM evidence to the CMSSC http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...listeners.html

I was wryly amused by some of comments by the BBC "spokeswoman". She was admirably selective with the facts.

Of the "90 operas broadcast last year", for example, how many were home-grown products?

Well, the largest number (around 40) were bought-in from the New York Metropolitan Opera matinee broadcasts - very dumbed-down affairs as we know, in their kitschy American presentation style and tiresome "backstage interviews". Many of the others were Proms broadcasts. Nearly all the rest were playlist afternoon airings of operas by the "anniversary boys" Verdi, Wagner and Britten, from familiar CD studio performances. Cheap and cheerful, but hardly supporting the genre.

Contemporary opera? Operetta from Germany?? Zarzuela from Madrid??? Dream on!

It is criminal that the BBC broadcasts virtually no productions at all from the major British opera companies, live or recorded, to the taxpayers who are funding them. Another example, I fear, of BBC Radio 3's dereliction of duty to the "have nots".

[Honoured Guest]

Of the "90 operas broadcast last year", for example, how many were home-grown products?
...
Contemporary opera? Operetta from Germany?? Zarzuela from Madrid??? Dream on!

It is criminal that the BBC broadcasts virtually no productions at all from the major British opera companies, live or recorded, to the taxpayers who are funding them. Another example, I fear, of BBC Radio 3's dereliction of duty to the "have nots".

Today's news report of Arts Council England's response to the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee's new Inquiry: The Future of the BBC chimes a little with your comment, although it's making a different point.

http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2014/01/bbc-must-collaborate-arts-organisations/

I expect someone here will know more facts about BBC broadcasts of UK opera performances. There must be some copyright issues, particularly with productions which are commercially recorded, sometimes on DVD. Are negotiations to broadcast perhaps more complex with international co-productions? "Virtually no productions" is a bit of an exaggeration! For example, last autumn two Music Theatre Wales opera productions were broadcast on Hear and Now (Eight Songs for a Mad King and The Killing Flower) and a third (Greek) was recorded for future broadcast.

[Master Jacques]

Indeed Honoured Guest, you are right to point to the pair of MTW productions heard on Hear and Now last summer. It's rather instructive, though, that both these were late night broadcasts (after 11pm) and that Greek is even now yet to see the light of day. To be fair, Turnage must have friends in the R3 camp: the last broadcast of a brand-new opera from one of our major houses was his Anna Nicole, back in 2011.

The number of commercial opera DVDs emanating from either ENO or Covent Garden over the last few years has been very small,; and payments for BBC radio broadcasts - as opposed to negotiated fees or royalties for commercial usage - are provided for according to fixed - and reasonable - scales, depending on the company concerned. That's why we're more likely to hear MTW than, say, Welsh National Opera on R3. It's a question of R3's unwillingness to pay for live broadcasts: companies such as Scottish Opera and Opera North would be only too glad of some extra exposure.

As to international co-productions, the fact is that we're far more likely to hear ENO/Met co-productions in their New York than London incarnations, with starry international casts as opposed to home-grown talent. If I were a British/European singer I know what I would think about this particular insult from BBC R3.

The fact that our opera companies only exist at all courtesy of large public subsidies is the main point here. We are fortunate to have them; and the best way of giving something back to the British taxpayers footing the bill would be to let us hear the music-making for which we're paying. It should be happening as a matter of course - as used to be the case a couple of decades ago - and not as an occasional treat. One (or even two) MTW swallows don't make a summer!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It might be interesting to note, too, that the three works cited by Honoured Guest take a total running time less than that of Act One of Götterdämmerung.

[subcontrabass]

I expect someone here will know more facts about BBC broadcasts of UK opera performances. There must be some copyright issues, particularly with productions which are commercially recorded, sometimes on DVD. Are negotiations to broadcast perhaps more complex with international co-productions? "Virtually no productions" is a bit of an exaggeration! For example, last autumn two Music Theatre Wales opera productions were broadcast on Hear and Now (Eight Songs for a Mad King and The Killing Flower) and a third (Greek) was recorded for future broadcast.

Suddenly, later this year, we have a whole lot of UK opera performances. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/lat...r3-spring.html (scroll to the bottom).

[Richard Tarleton]

I expect someone here will know more facts about BBC broadcasts of UK opera performances.

I hope this is helpful. Several years ago now, I attended a breakfast hosted by BBC Wales for about 100 invited guests at a hotel near here, aimed at telling us about what the BBC was offering. This being Wales most of the questions were about the coverage of rugby , so for variety I asked why, when we had WNO on our doorstep, did we not hear more home-grown opera productions on the radio instead of Opera from the Met. The answer was simple - it was vastly cheaper to buy stuff off the peg than to do an OB. I don't suppose much has changed.

[jean]

That's interesting! I have often wondered why so little of WNO's output is broadcast (or Opera North's, for that matter.)

[Sir Velo]

The answer was simple - it was vastly cheaper to buy stuff off the peg than to do an OB. I don't suppose much has changed.

What an indictment of a total lack of imagination or business sense. Has the BBC no one with the vision to see the huge opportunities of doing a deal with WNO and then syndicating the broadcast rights?